Cogeco completes radio stations’ transition to new antenna on Mount Royal

A five-stage reorganizing of radio station antennas on the Mount Royal Antenna has been completed, with the most notable change being that the city’s most powerful FM transmitter CKOI is now broadcasting from Mount Royal instead of the CIBC building downtown.

Cogeco Media president Michel Lorrain told me the process (approved by the CRTC in September) was completed before the holidays, but the stations were at 80% power until everything could be properly tested, and the ramp up to full power happened last week.

(Warning: Lots of technical nerdy antenna talk ahead.)

Now, instead of transmitting from four different antennas (three at Mount Royal, plus CKOI), all four stations — CHMP-FM 98.5, CFGL-FM 105.7 (Rythme FM), CKOI-FM 96.9 and CKBE-FM 92.5 (The Beat) — are on a new eight-bay antenna from Italian manufacturer SIRA that wraps around the tower just below the upper platform.

The new installation also allowed Cogeco to implement an increase in power for The Beat, which was authorized in 2013 to increase to 100,000 watts from 41.4kW.

The other three Cogeco stations were previously on three separate antennas on the upper platform, about 20 metres higher. The lower height will have a slight impact on their signals, but not significant enough to be noticed. CHMP-FM has increased its power from 41kW to 48kW to compensate, and CKOI-FM, which had planned to go to 147kW, will instead go to 148kW. On the CIBC tower it was broadcasting at 307kW.

The new antenna setup gives Cogeco more control, and will open the door to HD Radio broadcasts. So far, only CFGL-FM 105.7 has HD running, and its sole HD signal simply rebroadcasts the analog signal of the same station.

CBC diagram of upper platform FM antennas (the list of transmitters on the left antenna has some errors)

With a vacancy on its upper platform FM antenna, CBC/Radio-Canada has moved CBM-FM (CBC Music 93.5) there, maintaining its power at 100,000 watts. The two other FM transmitters have Bell’s stations — one has just CITE-FM (Rouge FM 107.3) and the other has CHOM, Virgin and Énergie.

Below, as best as I can piece it together (so there may be errors), is the full list of FM and TV stations (and their auxiliary or standby transmitters) on the Mount Royal Antenna, from top to bottom (heights are given as centre of the antenna measured from the base of the tower):

There is something called Saftey Code 6 (Industry Canada) that limits the level of non-inonizing radiation emitted from any broadcasting tower. Pretty sure CBC’s multiple additions to the Mount Royal tower blew past that years ago. With the addition of the new COGECO stations the permitted levels must be way in the rear view mirror. It’s a real danger.

One of our techs at Standard years ago told me once that every time he was up at the transmitter site he wanted to tell people sunbathing near by to run for their lives.

Try using your key fob electronic door opener on your car in the parking lot next to Smith House and you’ll see what I mean.

The conversation about the Rf emitted by water meters has always made me laugh.

There is something called Saftey Code 6 (Industry Canada) that limits the level of non-inonizing radiation emitted from any broadcasting tower. Pretty sure CBC’s multiple additions to the Mount Royal tower blew past that years ago.

There was a moratorium for a while on new additions to the Mount Royal Antenna for a while, but it was eventually lifted.

Because the digital TV transmitters use less power than the analog transmitters they replaced (except the 400kW CBC and Radio-Canada stations), I believe there’s actually less overall RF coming out of it than there was before. Cogeco’s antenna is also optimized to minimize the amount of RF pointed toward the ground. But Safety Code 6 is still a consideration, and its why Cogeco’s transmitters weren’t running at full power to start. It’s also why when there’s any work on the tower that requires a human actually going up to the antennas, most stations broadcasting from the tower either have to shut down, reduce power or switch to their standby transmitters.

Actually, the safety code 6 is more than ok at the Mt-Royal transmitter site, the safety code 6 measurements have been made every new station installed in the tower and CBC is respecting the new more restrict code 6 without any problems.

For now, yes. The stadium wants to open the rooftop to tourists as part of some yet-to-be-announced plan, which requires moving transmitters off the tower. CHAA-FM Longueuil has already gotten approval to move to Mount Royal, leaving Télé-Québec and CIBL-FM with unclear plans.